


earned and deserved

by Heavenward (PreludeInZ)



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Boys Become Thunderbirds, Gen, Gift Fic, Pre-IR, young John Tracy is the most earnest and precious creature alive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 22:37:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7592917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/Heavenward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here is a gift for The Winter Swallow, a companion to That Which Tears Us Apart, Ties Us Together. That is a hell of a mouthful, and the summary makes for more effective mental shorthand; “Boys become Thunderbirds”. Possibly you’re already lucky enough that those three words make your spine do that very pleasurable shivery thing. I can’t even think that phrase without my heart swelling about three sizes, and my heart is a dead dark star that pumps nothing but sticky black goo. Suffice to say, you wanna read it. LIke go, now. Read it. I’ll wait. For those of you already as lucky as I am, here is a thing about John and Kyrano.</p><p>Set shortly after Chapter 2 and shortly before Chapter 3. A Sunday morning talk in the fallout of a big damn bomb.</p>
            </blockquote>





	earned and deserved

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WinterSwallow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterSwallow/gifts).
  * Inspired by [That Which Tears Us Apart, Ties Us Together](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4919173) by [WinterSwallow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterSwallow/pseuds/WinterSwallow). 



In a family that consists of true extroverts, extroverted introverts, and introverted extroverts, John’s got the market cornered as far as true introversion. What makes him sometimes inscrutable and frustrating to his younger brothers—what makes him seem like a wise old soul to his elder—is the simple fact that he listens more than he talks. Not knowing this about him, it’s easy to read the entire spectrum of emotion in John’s silence, and it’s all too frequently coloured by someone else’s mood, usually to his detriment.

Knowledge is knowing that John’s always been quiet. Wisdom is knowing _why_. Kyrano’s fortunate to have an authentically wise old soul, of the sort that’s earned and deserved, rather than misattributed to a thoughtful young man who’s not actually shy or soft-spoken or cowed by stronger personalities. He’d just rather be silent than say anything that doesn’t need saying. He and Kyrano have that in common.

So when John had come to sit in the lounge with his cup of coffee, eschewed the stairs and stepped over the back of one of the couches and settled down, Kyrano had lifted his own mug in greeting, and gone back to browsing his way through the latest world news. There’d been a nod in answer, and then John had pulled out his own tablet and his own preferred reading.

There’s always been something impossibly honest about John’s particular brand of companionable silence. It’s the fact that he’s just as interested in the quality of the company as he is in the quality of the silence. If John’s sought you out and parked himself in the vicinity, then it’s genuinely just the pleasure of your presence that interests him.

As such, it’s that much more significant when John clears his throat, and breaks an early morning silence of such a rare and imminent quality. Thus alerted, Kyrano looks up, and thus prompted, John continues, “It’s more than just know-how, isn’t it?”

Kyrano puts his coffee cup down and shifts slightly on the couch, the sort of subtle opening of his posture, a careful study in body language that cues John to continue, lets him know he’s being listened to. “And it’s more than training, and it’s more…more than pilots’ licenses and EMT certifications. It’s more than just being _capable_ of doing this.”

The other thing to know about John’s silences is the way he uses their wide open space to carefully construct what he wants to say. All too often, he gets interrupted by people (Scott, Gordon) who go charging along the length of his train of thought, uncoupling the cars (Gordon), or leaping aboard and thieving the contents (Scott), and leaving a carefully engineered statement in a disconnected mess. The trick with John is letting him talk. “Go on.”

John’s laying tracks towards the heart of an argument he’s going to need to make serious structural investment in, if the trends in overheard conversations around the island are any indication. “All the money and the skills and the gear and the commitment—that’s all fine. That’s all achievable, that’s just more of the same thing Dad’s done all his life. But there’s something more.” He hesitates, and then, “There’s something about _us_.”

“You’re all very talented,” Kyrano observes mildly. This is pure, high-octane understatement and the sort of irony that sometimes gets lost on John, when he’s got something to say. It doesn’t derail him.

“There’s a reason he thinks we’d _want_ to do this,” John persists, and he’s rearranged himself in his seat, too. Unlike the deliberate calculation at play when Kyrano adjusts his posture, John’s social cues are all entirely involuntary, and the way he pulls his legs up, sits cross-legged and gets comfortable in his argument—he’s settling in, picking up steam. “Giving back. It’s not prestige or power or politics, even if it’s only realistic to think so…right down at the very heart of it, he’s talking about helping people. Paying it all forward, and being _there_ , on the ground, and _really_ helping people. That’s the new bottom line. Lives saved. Right?”

There’s a universe next to theirs, one where John Tracy had been snagged by the sort of corporate think-tank that would make designs upon the fifteen-year-old polymathic son of an industrial titan. One where he’d been put through Harvard with that degree in Telecommunications. One where he’d gone on to be the sort of brilliant little demigod who could climb up onto the pantheon next to his father, pulling at the strings of foreign and public policy, political strategy, economics—anything that suited the direction of his shrewd, brilliant brain, and its way of seeing right to the facts of a matter. Of course, in that universe he’s utterly _miserable_ , but _that_ universe isn’t this one, so Kyrano just nods. “That’s more or less the absolute essence of it.”

A blink, and then, “…are you making fun of me?”

Kyrano chuckles. “No, John, I’m not making fun of you. You’ve just got that way of boiling things down to the essentials. Funny thing is, I don’t really need the idea broken down to its foundation. I got in on the ground floor.”

John’s straightforwardness is one of his most admirable qualities. The fact that he can, on occasion, _entirely_ miss the point—is something he still needs to work on. There’s a sheepish flush of colour to his cheeks when he shrugs. “Oh. Well, yeah.”

The train hasn’t derailed, but it’s run up to a water stop, and it’ll need a little nudge to get started again, once refueled. “What’s your take on it, then? The new bottom line. Quarterly reports about people pulled out of earthquake rubble, out of burning buildings. Contract negotiations about support lent to overwhelmed local governments. Lives saved.”

Absent of anyone he needs to defend his opinion to, John still hesitates. Quite honestly, Kyrano’s not surprised. He’s been waiting to field questions, waiting to hear about doubts, and John’s exactly the sort of person to want to bring them up privately, one to one. But there’s an almost confessional hush of John’s tone when he says, “I don’t care about that.”

The younger man looks like he’s spooked himself just by saying it out loud and Kyrano’s immediate instinct is not to react, though it’s certainly the sort of statement that merits at least an arch of an eyebrow, and the desire to say, “Beg pardon?” As though what he’s heard is so heinous as to be unbelievable. Instead Kyrano leans forward, still open and receptive, non-judgmental. “Clarify,” he suggests.

Permission given, the careful order goes out of John’s tone and he plows into the heart of the matter, repeats himself, “I mean I don’t _care_. I don’t care about that part, about the…the whole _noblesse oblige_ of it. Giving back. Helping people. Lives saved. I don’t care. I really don’t care, it’s just—if that’s what I have to do to get into orbit, I’ll do it. I want to do it. My reasons are wrong, but I don’t care.”

The fact that, even at their very best, Jeff’s boys still worry about being _better_ is one of the most damning things about their father. It’s one of the most redeeming things about his _boys_ , but it more than a little bit damns their father, that John would worry about the reasons he wants to save the world.

“I think ‘wrong’ is the wrong word for your reasons,” Kyrano says, gently. “There’s a funny thing about saving lives. You get a bit of a taste for it. Maybe reserve judgment until you’ve had the experience, because otherwise I don’t know if you’re in a position to know anything about that, just yet.”

This much is true, but John’s the sort of person that believes there’s a standard for everything, and that somewhere out there is a gradated card that could be held up against the grayness of morality, and tell him whether or not a choice is right or wrong. “Scott says Dad’s buying me.” A beat, and then, always a stickler for technicalities, John corrects himself, “That Dad’s bought me.”

If John got razorwire shrewdness from his father, then Scott got blistering rhetoric. More often than not it’s something said by Scott and/or Jeff that sends one of the others running for Kyrano and a sympathetic ear. “Are you feeling bought and paid for, then?”

“I feel like he painted a target on my back and took aim.”

Kyrano winces. There’s a whole other kind of weight to _that_ metaphor, and John continues. “It’s not _hard_ to get into space,” he starts, and it’s true.

It’s a little sad just _how_ true. Low earth orbit is no longer the provenance of space agencies and eccentric billionaires, though Jeff Tracy has clout with both. Space tourism is an industry. Space _industry_ is an industry, and along with the lowering of the technological barrier necessary to break out of the atmosphere, so too have the qualification standards fallen. John could’ve dropped a year’s worth of tuition on a reservation at one of _several_ space hotels. If he’d _really_ wanted to buck the curve, he could’ve blown out of college entirely, done three months’ worth of bare bones training, and enlisted in the service of an asteroid mining company, the sort of fantastically dangerous, shoestring operation that’s half the reason his father’s thoughts have turned towards people who need saving. If all John wanted was to get himself into space, he could very easily have turned himself into the sort of person whose life might become a write-off. There’s a certain tragedy in the fact that, for all the simplicity of what John wants, the mundanity that’s been made out of space travel has taken the edge off the sort of dream he _could’ve_ had.

But the thing that Jeff had counted on, the thing that has Kyrano expecting exactly what the end of the sentence is going to be, even as John concludes, “—but it’s hard to get into space _right_.”

Technically, from a strictly semantic point of view—whether it’s in a WWSA shuttle, a luxury space liner, or a rattletrap contraption that shake a body’s nerves to pieces before it breaks atmo—there’s no wrong way to get into space. But the _right_ way to do it is the way Jeff had done it. John believes in standards, and his father had set the highest one possible. His father, who’d broken ground at the first base on the dark side of the moon. There’s no way in the world—or out of it—that John’s going to aim any lower. So no space tourism. No space industry. John wants to be an astronaut, a _real_ astronaut—just like dad. Not someone who _only_ visits or _only_ works or even _only_ lives there. Someone who _belongs_ there. Someone who’s there for those grand, all-important reasons. And maybe despite what he says he doesn’t care about, John cares about the reasons a little more than he thinks.

Abruptly Kyrano sees John’s point—too late not to be skewered by it. John’s too smart not to know that his father’s giving him exactly what he’s always wanted. What Scott’s got him wondering is _why_ he wants it. What _Kyrano’s_ wondering is whether or not Scott’s ever going to be self-aware enough to realize just how easily he can make the smartest of his brothers question the bedrock of his entire existence, and why that’s the sort of thing that’s terribly cruel to do to someone who thinks too much already.

“…or do you think that’s…is that naive?” There’s been a long enough silence for the sort of person who thinks to much to start to second-guess himself. “I mean, I know it’s not a shortcut. He’s not just _giving_ me what I want. I know I have to do all the work I’m doing anyway, I’ll still have to make sure I’m good enough. But, just—having something to _aim_ at. Having that assurance that it’s not all going to be for nothing, that I won’t get tripped up by some new regulation or because they changed the maximum height limit or by…by bureaucracy, or whatever it was—would be. I want to do it _this_ way because I think it’s—“

This sounds like the sort of scrambling for justification that shouldn’t be necessary. It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours. This seems like a salient point. “John, you haven’t even known about this for a whole day, yet.”

This gets a shrug and a deliberate direction of John’s gaze away from Kyrano and towards a fascinatingly loose thread on one of the couch cushions. “…actually, I got into dad’s files on TI servers a few days ago and—“

Kyrano interrupts, “ _John Tracy_. Hack into TI’s servers again and I’ll _personally_ ensure you never get more than ten feet off the ground for the rest of your life.” But in the sort of tone that makes John grin, lighting up the way he so rarely does. A beat. “—when?”

“Wednesday.”

“ _How_?”

John’s grin widens a little further. “It was very technical. Don’t worry, I left a note.”

And another back door, knowing John, but Kyrano doesn’t press. There’ve been enough friendly, late night games of poker between him and the boys that he knows John’s the one with the poker face. Gordon tweaks his nose and Scott shuffles his cards. Virgil, if you know to listen for it, will tap his fingers out of common 4/4 and into a celebratory triple time if he’s got a good hand. Alan just grins the whole game through, regardless of whether he’s got pure gold or absolute trash for a hand. Alan’s bluff is that he’s just happy to be included. And _John’s_ got a face straight enough that _apparently_ he can sit on his father’s biggest, boldest secret just as easily as he sits on pocket aces. For _half a week_.

“So you think you’ve thought about this, then.”

John nods. “Yeah. And I don’t _care_ if Dad’s just giving me exactly what I want, I—“

 _—still want it. You want it on the terms of anyone who’d give It to you and you have no idea how lucky you are that your dad’s the one who’s offering._ Kyrano cuts in again, “And why would it be so bad if your father decided to give you exactly what you’ve _always_ wanted?”

That trips John up, and he catches himself, narrows his eyes like it might be a trick question. Like he’s already given Kyrano the facts as they stand, broken the problem down to its very foundations. Only he hasn’t _quite_ got down to bedrock yet, because Scott’s gotten in the way, with his convictions and certainties that are the iron plate to blunt John’s razor sharp reason.

“I don’t suppose it’s crossed your mind that maybe there’s nowhere in the world good enough _for you_ , John. That you don’t have to _settle_ for whatever gets you into orbit, that there should be something—someone—who knows what you’re capable of and makes use of you to your very fullest extent.” _Someone who’s seen every single thing you’ve done in service of what you believe in and only wants what you’ve earned and **deserve.**_

This isn’t the sort of thing that gets said to John and he’s gone very, very still. “It shouldn’t be easy,” he says, as though this is an objection.

“As though anything you’ve done so far has been _easy_.”

“Nepotism is—“

“Not the term you’re looking for.”

“Scott says—“

“To _hell_ with what Scott says. Scott doesn’t know the anything about you worth knowing, if he refuses to account you credit for the sense it takes to occasionally _agree_ with your father. Scott’s throwing a tantrum and I hope one day he has the decency to look back with _shame_.”

“ _Kyrano_.” This isn’t the sort of thing that gets said _about_ Scott, either, and there’s something a little bit shocked about John.

Kyrano waves a hand, disregards the shock and awe, but lets the blood find it’s way back into John’s cheeks before he asks the question that needs asking, “ _Is_ this what you want, John?”

It takes him a minute. And it’s in a voice that’s smaller than it should be, when answering this sort of question, “—yes.”

“Then there’s no earthly reason why you shouldn’t have it.” If he had a newspaper instead of a wafer thin tablet, Kyrano would’ve picked it back up and jerked the pages open, as though that was the close of the matter. Instead he picks his tablet back up and chuckles at the lack of force in the gesture, and the way John’s staring at him, as though he’s still waiting for the final word. “Well, that’s _you_ sorted, then. Welcome aboard.”

John swallows and manages a rather shaky smile, a little unsettled by the peaks of emotion in the room. As sure as anything, he’s already gathering himself up for a tactical retreat. “One down, three to go,” he jokes, getting to his feet, cup of coffee abandoned and forgotten.

Kyrano only smiles and nods and goes back to wise, inscrutable silence. In his head, where John won’t hear it, a countdown starts.

_Five—_


End file.
